The Baltic keeps pulling them in. More names for the 2026 edition, more proof that Open’er doesn’t do half-measures.
Florence + The Machine headlines the Orange Main Stage on July 1, and this feels like the right moment. “Everybody Scream”, released last Halloween, is her most raw and confrontational record yet, built over two years with a tight circle that includes IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen, The National‘s Aaron Dessner, and Mitski. The album grew directly out of a health crisis, an ectopic miscarriage mid-tour that required emergency surgery, and what followed was a reckoning with womanhood, mortality, folk horror and spiritual mysticism. Florence has always been larger than life. Now she’s also genuinely dangerous. Expect a show that doesn’t just fill the stage but consumes it.
Jehnny Beth arrives on the Flow Stage on July 3 carrying the weight of a genuinely restless career. Former frontwoman of Savages, Mercury Prize-nominated and ferocious, she then stepped out solo with the bold, cinematic “To Love Is To Live” in 2020 before sharing stages with IDLES, Depeche Mode on their European run, and Queens of the Stone Age across the US. Her second solo album “You Heartbreaker, You”, made with longtime collaborator Johnny Hostile fresh from touring with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is exactly what the name suggests: urgent, confrontational, built from chaos. The woman doesn’t do comfortable.
Just Mustard come to the Flow Stage on July 3 as a band in full evolution. The Dundalk five-piece built their name on warped guitars and cavernous low-ends across “Wednesday” (2018) and “Heart Under” (2022). Their third album “WE WERE JUST HERE”, released in October 2025, moves toward something warmer, more anthemic, chasing the physical rush of club spaces without abandoning what makes them strange. Robert Smith personally chose them to support The Cure. That’s not a footnote, that’s a verdict. They’ll be playing songs that feel simultaneously like noise and release.
Over on the Alter Stage on July 3, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom bring a genuinely unusual story. The two connected two decades ago when Noah Lennox (Panda Bear) thanked Spacemen 3 in the liner notes of “Person Pitch”. That mutual recognition eventually became a creative partnership, co-productions on “Tomboy” and “Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper”, and ultimately a full collaborative album “RESET” in 2022. They’ve been performing and recording together ever since, with a new 7″ single “Graveyard / Lucky Charm” dropping on Record Store Day this month. Theirs is a set built on dense, hook-heavy psychedelia that feels warm and slightly untethered from time.
Also on the Alter Stage, on July 2, Basseterre bring something rawer and newer. The London duo of Polish-English vocalist and writer Maria Manow and American-English producer Ike Clateman met in Berlin in 2022, reconvened outside Peckham Audio, and built a project named after a bassline that was, according to Clateman, simply too intense. Their “Basspunk” and “Basspunk 2” EPs and debut album “Forever” established their reputation, and their 2025 EP “?” keeps the edge sharp. This is exactly the kind of act Open’er exists to platform.
Hyphen Dash take the Flow Stage on July 3 carrying something heavier than a setlist. The Kyiv-based quartet recorded their album “Basement 626” ten kilometres from the front line. That fact does not need dramatising. Their music, blending hip-hop, jazz, electronica and prog-rock into genuinely inventive instrumental terrain, was featured in Rolling Stone. Their more recent album “LATE”, six years in the making, followed in 2025, and they kicked off 2026 with a European tour across the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Hungary. They are here because the music earns it, full stop.
Rounding out the Flow Stage on July 4, Łaszewo bring a different kind of energy. The Santa Barbara trio of Matthew Ehrlich, Justin De La Fuente and Keeva Bouley have been building a loyal following since 2018 through electronic pop that crosses from synth-driven production into genuine singer-songwriter intimacy. Their 2024 debut album “In Color” is a confident statement from a band that knows exactly what it’s doing. High-energy, melodic, and built for open air.
And that’s not the end of it. Open’er 2026 also welcomes Avi, Joy (Anonymous), Oki, and Sadie Jean to the lineup. More to come.
